Urgh...
Didn't sleep much last night. I'm sure no one is surprised by that. Managed to get up and make it down to the gym with Emach by 8:30AM for the parade. Marched. Watched some of the instructors get crazy. Watching Mike running around the parade route in boxing gloves yelling shit like "I'm so drunk" and "Isn't everyone excited about AMERICA!?!?!?!" was a freaking riot. Especially when a 3 year old on the side of the route called him out (Mike is about 6'4") saying "We box!", and then seeing Mike crouch down and let the kid pummel him was amazingly hilarious. Emach and I ended up carrying the school sign around for the second half of the parade route. Sifu Chris put his finger on the middle of the sign and acted like he was helping, but pretty much spent the whole time abusing Emach. Included in this abuse were such gems as "I can see you threatening to choke out 5 year olds for their candy on Halloween.", implications that Emach is a nigh-uncontrolled meth head, and that he would be better off abandoning his current job in favor of one as a carnie. Oh, and apparently carnival food is made from the corpses of people who die on the unsafe rides. Yes, this was all said during our conversation on the parade route. Plus Sifu spent a bunch of the conversation speaking in his absurdly melodramatic Brazilian accent. If I had been more with it, I probably would have dropped the sign laughing. Got out of there around 10:30, went looking for food, eventually decided to pick up the rest of the parts for the smoker and Angie before getting food. After eating, getting beer and such, and getting back to my house the three of us tried to get the smoker set up. By the time we did it was around 2 PM. We sat around and talked for a bit, climbed a tree, Emach and I each had ourselves a pint of Murphy's (fucking win), got icecream, and basically just killed time until people made their way over. The party/gathering itself was very successful. Much food was cooked and consumed, much beer was drunk, and many fireworks were ...uh... fired. There were a lot of people here, some drunkeness, plus I broke my usual one drink limit and had an earth shattering TWO beers in one day. I took pictures. I'll have to put them up. The BBQ pulled pork came out amazing, and the first two bowls that went out were gone in almost no time. The only thing we ended up with a lot of by the end was beer. I'm not sure how we ended up with as much as we did, but we did. We bought way too many fireworks, and were firing off the biggest stuff in the area, so we didn't launch for long. Lots left over for next year. Apparently right as Scott took off a cop came rolling down an adjacent street. At some point during this thing I went off and did battle with a rather stubborn log, but I was eventually victorious. The log was split, and the fire was saved thanks to me, the steel wedge, and my trusty 18lb sledge which I can somehow one hand wield now. The night ended with the remaining people sitting around the can/firepit and talking about crap, or napping. It was kinda nice. Anyway, I'm trying to stay up to chat on Skype, but I'm loosing it hardcore, so I think I'll end this one right here...
-i11
-i11